Experts split on defendant's mental state in slaying of 88-year-old Fairview man

Assistant Prosecutor John Higgins shows the jury the pot used in the beating during the trial.

The clashing opinions of psychiatrists are at the heart of a murder case that went to a jury in Hackensack on Thursday, exactly four years after a World War II veteran died of injuries suffered in a bludgeoning in his Fairview home.

Was the defendant, Edwin Estrada, a manic-depressive drug addict hearing the voice of the Devil in his head, urging him to “Do it, do it”?

Or was he making up a story because he knew that Vincent Leuzzi could identify him as the burglar who had entered his home looking for cash.

Holding up the dented saucepan used to beat the 88-year-old Leuzzi to death, Bergen County Assistant Prosecutor John Higgins described the devastating injuries allegedly inflicted by Estrada.

Higgins urged jurors to reject claims by Estrada and a defense psychiatrist that a combination of mental illness, voices in his head and drug addiction had so impaired his judgment that he could not be found guilty of murder.

Estrada had testified that he was high on PCP, a hallucinogen, when he began pummeling Leuzzi on the head at the command of the Devil. He said he had only intended to steal from him, not kill him.

Leuzzi was attacked on July 15, 2010, and died nine days later. But shortly after the beating, he was able to tell police that he had been hit from behind and tried to fend off the blows as he pleaded with his attacker to stop.

But Estrada, didn’t stop, Higgins, the prosecutor, told the jury. Leuzzi was knocked down and bleeding, and blood flew off the pot, landing six feet away, as Estrada brought his arm back for yet another blow, Higgins said.

Leuzzi, a retired mason and bricklayer, died of blunt force trauma caused by at least nine blows, some so forceful they caused multiple fractures and depressions in his skull.

Estrada’s lawyer, John Pieroni said psychiatrists at the Bergen County Jail who evaluated Estrada after his arrest, as well as a forensic psychiatrist hired by the defense, had diagnosed Estrada as suffering from bipolar disorder and dependence on a variety of drugs — cocaine, PCP, Ecstasy, opiates, marijuana — and alcohol.

At the time of the assault, Estrada’s state of mind was so compromised by his abuse of drugs and his underlying mental illness that he could not form the requisite criminal intent to be convicted of murder, Pieroni argued to the jury.

Estrada, 22, lived in Cliffside Park. He is a military high school dropout whose unmarried parents split when he was a child, Pieroni told the jury.

In addition to murder, felony murder, weapons, burglary, robbery and credit-card theft counts, Estrada is charged with conspiring with the victim’s grandson, Andrew Abella, to commit two burglaries at the apartment before the July assault that claimed Leuzzi’s life.

Pieroni suggested to the jury on Thursday that Abella, who lived across the street from his grandfather and had been stealing from him for months, may have been the one who delivered the fatal blows — a scenario Higgins dismissed as ridiculous.

“My client remembers hitting Vincent Leuzzi two, three, four times over the head” before blacking out, Pieroni said. Abella could have come in, seen his injured grandfather “and whacked him over the head several more times,” Pieroni said, noting the victim told police there could have been more than one assailant.

Abella testified for the prosecution as part of a plea bargain deal that calls for probation. He admitted that he told Estrada that his grandfather kept cash in his home and how to break into the apartment through a bathroom window. He acknowledged that his grandfather would still be alive but for his role in the crime.

Pieroni also sought to undercut the prosecution’s psychiatric expert, calling him a hired gun who was “evasive” on cross-examination and who tried to “backpedal” on a statement in his report that Estrada was high on drugs when he beat Leuzzi.

On the stand Tuesday, the prosecution’s psychiatrist, Steven Simring, said he should have written that Estrada would have been on drugs if he had had the money to buy them.

Pieroni also blasted as “preposterous” Simring’s assertions that the psychiatrists at the jail didn’t know what they were doing and were just prescribing anti-psychotic drugs to Estrada to keep him subdued.

Simring testified that he disagreed with the defense expert, psychiatrist Azariah Eshkenazi, on whether Estrada suffered from bipolar disorder.

“I think he’s making it up,” Simring told the jury, referring to Estrada’s claim that he fell under the grip of the Devil and was commanded to beat the victim. Noting the lack of mental illness in his medical history, he added, “Usually it doesn’t start two minutes before you kill somebody.”

Estrada told detectives shortly after his arrest that he grabbed a pot from the kitchen because he feared Leuzzi might have a gun. He never mentioned smoking marijuana and PCP and hearing voices in his statement to the detectives, Higgins said.

It was only in later accounts given to the forensic psychiatrists and on the witness stand that Estrada introduced those elements, Higgins said.

Rejecting the defense of diminished capacity, Simring testified that in all phases of the crime — from planning a burglary to attacking the victim and stealing his credit card — Estrada “was able to act purposely and knowingly.”

Noting that Estrada testified that he never meant to kill Leuzzi, Higgins told the jurors that they could convict him of murder if they find that his state of mind was to cause serious bodily injury, which resulted in death.

“You can find that when he started smashing his head in, it was his intent to kill him,” the prosecutor said.